Mayor makes public statement
By Whitney Barnes
Staff Writer
A recent social media post by a Marshall City Councilman regarding a proposed subdivision became an unexpected topic at the Marshall City Council meeting Tuesday, Dec. 17.
On Sunday, Dec. 15, Councilman Swisher voiced his concerns on Facebook about the city’s plan to give away 30 acres of land to an out-of-town developer at no cost. This land was originally acquired through a trade of 200 acres aimed at attracting businesses and boosting the local economy. The developer intends to build 100 homes on the property.
In his post, Swisher expressed frustration over this decision, arguing that the land could have been developed by local entities. He also mentioned potential conflicts of interest involving the Marshall Select Development Corporation (MSDC), which played a role in attracting the developer, due to leadership connections with the listing realtor. He encouraged residents to voice their opinions to council members and to attend the upcoming city council meeting, although he noted that no vote would be held at that time.
During the meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Vince Lutterbie and City Administrator JD Kehrman addressed several community members who attended to express their concerns about the proposed 100-home subdivision, in response to the post by Swisher. Before opening the floor for public comments, Mayor Lutterbie delivered the following statement addressing the criticisms made by Swisher.
“Good evening. When I began my term as mayor there were issues facing the city on several levels. The council had internal problems with each other and some city employees. I’ve worked hard to soothe those feelings and solve the problems. They may not all be solved, but we are certainly in a better place than we were a year ago. There were areas of friction or at least lack of communication with Missouri Valley College, Marshall Public Schools, Marshall Municipal Utilities and Marshall-Saline Development Corporation. The city council had not been active in the Missouri Municipal League for some time. Since then, the city has partnered with all of these entities, and all of us are on the same page and working together on present, as well as future projects. I am the central region president of the Missouri Municipal League at present, and we use their resources all the time. I bring all of this up at this time as there is now a disturbance in the force. I want to talk about a few contradictions and some perceived threats from a post on Facebook that recently came to my attention. It is written by one of our councilmen and it is alarming enough both in content and practice that I thought I should speak to it in this form. It has to deal with a proposed land deal with a developer that wishes to build 100 houses on property currently owned by the city. There have been hurdles and some temporary setbacks, but I feel that both sides have dealt with in good faith and that we are almost there. The councilman who wrote this has usually voted against proposals that deal with land use in the city. I know that we can all play hardball, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we also need to be realistic. Cities are not money-making ventures. Cities and the elected and appointed officials are tasked with making the city safe and keeping it running smoothly. If it were a money-making venture, people would pay for their own street and sidewalk repairs and, indeed, that was the case many years ago. Citizens would have to pay for fire insurance or be billed if there was a fire on their property. We wouldn’t have a park system. The examples are endless, but it comes down to decisions and how best we use our resources. Sometimes, that means a city builds a SPEC Building to attract a business. Sometimes it means the city trades land to alleviate potentially prohibitive costs in developing that land, the latter is this case in point. The land is currently zoned R2 residential and even had an existing plat for a subdivision. It is not zoned commercial, agricultural or industrial. It should come as no surprise that a developer is interested in it. This developer is willing to take the risks involved with building the infrastructure first, then building houses; that’s roads, sewers, everything. The only request he had was to keep the streets maintainable but not to finish them until the risk of damage by heavy equipment is over with. We have not approved this deal yet, as there are still some state storm water items that need to be resolved. Also, the city has requested a reversionary clause in the contract that would allow the city to reclaim the land and gain all the improvements in the case of a default. The city has done its due diligence on this matter and the project will stand or fall on its own, when it comes before the council. We did a similar deal with the public schools recently and the city is not on the hook for the infrastructure work being done now or in the future at the site of the new school. Even though there is more to discuss on these matters, I want to keep things as brief as possible. This same councilman is a good guy, but he’s never shied away from lecturing me or the council on accountability and transparency. Yet this missive on Facebook is anything but. It is also filled with innuendo and geared language, calculated at getting a response from those not totally informed on this situation. First item that I noticed, he suggested the developer is from the St. Louis area, as if that should be a deal breaker. Waynesville is twice as far from St. Louis as Marshall is from Kansas City. When was the last time that a decision by Kansas City’s City Council affected how we ran Marshall? The suggestion itself is repugnant and off-putting. The next items are the words “free” and “Stranger.” Stranger, capitalized, has to instill doubt or fear. “Stranger danger” is a good thing to teach the children, but it has very little place in city affairs. Strangers own Cargill, ConAgra, the Marshall Plaza, Walmart and others. We leave the way they do business up to them. It isn’t much of a problem for us to vet new people coming to town, and this developer has been vetted satisfactorily by several sources. The “free” issue is also misleading and not at all transparent. As I alerted to earlier, the contractor has the skin in this and the city has very little, if any, liability. The size of the lots should not be a concern. People buy lots, all sorts of houses. There are requests all the time to build an oddly shaped lots. The price is what it is. Housing prices, groceries costs and car prices have all gone up. It’s not going to get any cheaper if we build this next year. Our councilman likes to bring up the Gieringer property. Yes, the realtors in town got us over for sandwiches and a pep talk. Most of us agreed to give them six months to find a developer. Well, we found something we thought would benefit the city more in the long term. You can argue about how it was done. I have apologized for any hurt it may have caused those who will listen, and I have learned from that deal not to make promises I can’t keep. He also asked if we should reimburse the developer of the Fitzgibbon property, as we charged him a minimal amount for his land. The developer had originally proposed adding a road and the infrastructure to the property. He later felt that it would be better only to do some work on Mitchell Street, so we felt comfortable in charging him a bit for the property as he didn’t have to spend as much on developing it. As far as people in the community being for or against the proposal, that is obviously their right. I would like to point out that there were many letters of support for this proposal from community leaders and organizations. MSDC has many concerned and impressive people on its board, as well, and to imply that they are complicit in a conflict of interest causing harm to the city is a false condemnation, as of some of our most valued citizens. To make another item clear, doing business with developers and other entities often starts with a meeting and closed session. As soon as a plan is produced you go public. That’s what happened in this case, and everything that was discussed in that first meeting has been made public in one form or another. This has been discussed in council meetings, planning and zoning meetings, and has been covered in the press. I’m not sure that Facebook experts have all the information, but if anybody is in doubt about any fact, we should be able to answer most of your questions here at City Hall. If you notice, the same people that claim the city never grows or tries to improve are against this project. There are other concerns that I have about this post, but the major one is that it appears to have been posted to intimidate council members by asking people of like mind to contact them, I’m getting tired of coercion by intimidation. It has been tried on this council several times and they have always overcome it. I am proud of them for that. I have a problem with a councilman taking issues on public forums with the idea of influencing anyone. Now, I know that he didn’t do this on the original post, but he has condoned it by not correcting falsehoods that appeared in ensuing comments.”
Following the public comments that addressed concerns about the sewer system, zoning, sourcing of materials, the impact of adding 100 new houses on local resources and the estimated prices of the homes — ranging from $300,000 to $400,000 — Lutterbie expressed gratitude for the open dialogue.
“We’ll work on those issues, and we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “This hasn’t been finalized yet. Feel free to come up again January 7, if we’re still going along this way.”
